Poker Winner Blog

BALLY World Famous Casino

Hollywood movie stars Cary Grant and Raquel Welch performed the opening ceremony when Ballys was built in 1973, at a cost of $100 million.

In 1981 a second tower was added and the hotel was expanded to over 2800 rooms. Now owned and operated by Park Place Entertainment, the Art Deco interior recently had a $72 million restoration. The complex includes restaurants and a shopping arcade. Read the rest of this entry »

BINION‘S HORSESHOE

Situated in the Horseshoe Hotel on Fremont Street in downtown Vegas, Binion’s gives a taste of how gambling used to be in the Old West. Opened in 1951 by Benny Binion, a former Texas bootlegger and gambler, the casino evokes the atmosphere of a traditional gambling hall — no shows, no music, just gambling. Minimum stakes are $2 on blackjack and $1 on craps. The poker tables are not for beginners though, as many professional players make their living here. Read the rest of this entry »

How much money do you need to keep from going broke if you’re a professional and poker is your paycheck?

A professional poker player should realize that every dollar she wins will not be added to her bankroll. After all, she has to pay rent and buy groceries just like anyone else, and her only source of income is her winnings. Lose, and she pays her bills the only way she can: by dipping into her bankroll. But there’s a limit to how deeply she can dig without putting herself in jeopardy. Read the rest of this entry »

At one point Ungar raised seven hands in a row. No one called. Was he bluffing? Of course he was — some of the time. Everyone knew that. But no one knew when. Every contestant hoped one of his opponents would be eliminated first. It didn’t matter which one. Every time someone was knocked out, the surviving players climbed another rung on the pay ladder. Ungar knew that.

Ungar’s mastery of the table seemed palpable. He was a shark among a school of fish, and he sensed blood in the water. Bao, short on chips the entire day, was the first to fall — eliminated by Judah. By 1:30 p.m. Ungar had more chips than his remaining four opponents combined. Read the rest of this entry »

The main event is what draws the crowds to Las Vegas, and the 1997 and 1998 World Series of Poker were more dramatic than most. One event is the thrilling yet ultimately sad tale of an incredible comeback, the other a quintessential American success story.

Stu Ungar: The Comeback Kid

A dozen former world champs competed in the 1997 event, including two- time winners Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Stu Ungar, along with 27-yearold defending champion Huck Seed. Formerly an engineering student at Cal Tech, Seed took a year’s sabbatical to play poker and never returned. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker is a brilliant blend of strategy and psychology — there is really nothing else like it. When compared with strategy, however, how important is psychology in poker? Well, you can beat poker without understanding psychology, but you can’t beat poker without understanding strategy. Therefore, it’s important to learn the fundamentals first. But wait! Now we’re going to say something that — at first — seems to be contradictory:Psychology can account for the majority of profit you will ever make in poker!

That statement is true because after you master the fundamentals of poker, you’re most of the way to becoming a good player as far as strategy goes. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker is amongst the mainly accepted card games among all. It has been extensively conventional all over the world and right through all casinos as well as online casinos. If you emerge at it correctly, poker is a plan game. Anything that involves strategy can be learned and applied.

With the correct strategy and guidelines from the experienced poker players, one can be a master in this game. I recognize a numeral of Poker Company who creates a living by now playing poker. Every one they accomplish is poker. It will obtain awhile for a learner to be a master in this game to make a living out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Benny Binion

One of Las Vegas’s last true patriarchs, Benny Binion started out by running illegal bootlegging and gambling rackets in Dallas during the 1930s. Binion arrived in Las Vegas in 1946 (some insist to evade murder charges back in Texas) and bought the dilapidated Eldorado Casino. He renamed it Binion’s Horseshoe, and it soon became the epicenter of gambling activity. The Horseshoe wasn’t really built for common tourists; it was a place for real gamblers.

For more than four decades, Binion had a standing public offer: He would accept a wager of any size, from anyone who walked into his casino. More than a few eccentrics were entranced by Binion’s willingness to take the ultimate gamble, and there are many stories in Binion’s folklore (all true) of high- rollers with suitcases full of money riding on a single roll at the craps table. But Binion’s first love was poker. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker is the only popular game of skillful human interaction where it’s possible on any given day to play against the world’s best players. At any of the hundreds of major poker tournaments held in the United States or Europe every year, you could find yourself face-to-face against former world champions such as Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., or Huck Seed. Ever heard of them? How about T. A. Preston? Name sound familiar? He’s better known as “Amarillo Slim.” If No-Limit Texas Hold’em is your game, you might get raised by none other than Johnny Chan, who appeared in the film, Rounders. Chan won two World Series of Poker titles back to back! Read the rest of this entry »

Expect Difficulties

You will succumb to all of your flaws as a poker player during the period you are struggling, growing, and reaching for a higher level of skill. Just because you’ve read all the books by all the experts, don’t deceive yourself into believing that you’re going to play as well as they do. Every top-notch player struggled to reach the level of success they’ve achieved. You’re going to have to do the same. Golf videos won’t turn you into Tiger Woods, chess monographs won’t turn you into Gary Kasparov, and Poker For Dummies will not turn you into Doyle Brunson. The best poker books will teach you how to talk the talk. You’ll have to walk the walk on your own! Read the rest of this entry »

Bookstores are filled with self-help books. Seminars galore promise to teach you how to be a winner in business, in love, and in your personal life. Some of these same principles can make you a winner at the poker table. Here are ten you may want to think about.

Be Aware of Your Strengths and

Weaknesses

An outrageous image at the table may work for some people but not for others. Some players are better suited to tournaments, others to ring games (cardrooms). Play your best game and play within the confines of your own comfort zone. In other words, know yourself, and do what you do well. Read the rest of this entry »

Using Statistics to Predict Your Expectations

If you think you can beat the games you intend to play in for a living but aren’t certain, you can use statistics to help you assess what you might expect to win over the long haul. This involves calculating your standard deviation and using it to assess the kind of results you might achieve.

Let’s say that after 900 hours of playing $20—$40 Hold’em, your standard deviation is 20 small bets per hour, which is equivalent to $400. Everyone’s standard deviation is different. Yours will depend on a number of factors, including your playing style, your opponents’, and how aggressive or passive the game is. Read the rest of this entry »

Practice with Computerized Software

No matter how many hands you play at the table, using software like Wilson Software’s Turbo Texas Hold’em to practice against lifelike opponents and run simulations that will test your own theories will help you make rapid progress in your development as a poker player.

Computers can do things humans don’t have the time to accomplish. We’ve run experiments that simulated a lifetime of poker. We could have tested that same hypothesis by playing eight hours a day, five days a week, for 30 years, but what could we accomplish with that knowledge once we finished our research? It might be helpful if poker is played in the afterlife, but we’re more concerned with earthly uses for our know-how. Read the rest of this entry »

Painting Yourself into a Corner

When Lou Krieger was 12 years old, his archenemy was Zimp, an overgrown, overweight 13-year-old. Zimp was always threatening to beat the daylights out of Krieger, who had no doubt he could do it. But Krieger had an out. Zimp was big and strong, but he was slow. Since Krieger could outrun him, outride him on a bicycle, and outclimb him over garage roofs and trees, he easily escaped every time Zimp took a run at him. As long as he was never cornered in a blind alley, he knew he could survive childhood. Read the rest of this entry »

Deciding If the Prize Is Worth the Game

Winning poker players usually won’t draw to a flush when the odds against making it are 3-to-1 or more, but the pot promises a payoff of only two dollars for each dollar invested. They’ll wait until the pot promises a bigger payoff before risking their money.

The analogy is also true away from the table. While real-life payoffs can vary widely, your investments are usually time, money, or both. Is it worth your time to spend half a day trying to make a small sale without the promise of greater rewards down the road, or are you better off courting one of your bigger, better customers? Read the rest of this entry »

Is there a player out there who hasn’t observed that poker is a metaphor for life? That metaphor is probably one reason why poker is so popular. Not only does it frequently mirror life, poker models it. Poker is life in a nutshell. The entirety of our existence compressed into a single hand of poker is a compelling thought.

A metaphor and a model for life! If true, there should be important life lessons everyone can take away from the poker table. When learned and applied, these lessons should make it much easier for a poker player to survive in a world where most people haven’t been force-fed these life-lessons across the poker table.

Being Selective and Aggressive

In the real world you do have to pick your battles, just as you must in poker. Sometimes you have to draw your proverbial line in the sand (”You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em“); other times you have to carefully choose when to retreat (”Know when to fold ‘em”). Read the rest of this entry »